Redline's Journal: I'm the Slime

There is this song I would hear all the time when I was a little kid. My stepdad was a huge Frank Zappa fan, and he had a large collection of zappa on wax. He would play these records a lot, and tell me that some of these songs were frighteningly accurate social commentaries. When I was a little kid, I had no idea what he meant, nor did I really care. I just thought the quality of the music was pretty bad.
But every time I turn on MSNBC, CNN, or 24-hour news channel dujour, I remember his voice and this little bit of a Zappa song:

I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

And I have to wonder, did Zappa really foresee cable "news" channels selling military industrial complex propaganda 24 hours a day? In 1978?
Every time I read a YRO story here on slashdot, that song echos in my mind, and I simultaneously shudder at the truth of US society in 2003 ("Until the rights to you are sold") and smile at the idea that my dad tried to warn me 20 years ago. Thanks dad, for implanting in my 8 year old mind the idea that there is more to life than MTV. :)